EventIDE provide multiple approaches for presenting auditory stimuli depending on used audio format and required timing accuracy.
Selecting element for delivering auditory stimuli
There are five
elements in EventIDE that can deliver audio in experiments.
- Wave Player is a default element for delivering audio stimuli stored in the raw Wave format. The element is simple to use and it can used to make a stimulus set. The element is recommended as a standard choice because it provide the best time accuracy and fidelity of audio playback. The element supports a choice of multiple sound cards allows to select the sound playback API among four different sound playback APIs available in Windows system.
- Direct Sound element is similar to Wave Player element in functions but it's designed to work exclusively with Direct Sound API. However, the Direct Sound element allows more advanced control of the sound hardware settings. The element can be recommended in Windows XP systems with old-fashion sound cards.
- Audio Player is a general-purpose audio player that supports a wide range of audio formats, including mp3. The element is not recommended when high temporal accuracy is required but could be a natural choice for delivering auditory feedback ans so on.
- Beeper Element provides an interface to a hardware tone generator, called PC speaker. If it's sufficient to use auditory stimuli made of simple tones, the element can produce extremely time-accurate sound output.
- Brazen Head Element element is capable of real-time synthesizing an input test to a speech. Playback timing accuracy can be quite poor compare to other audio elements due to underlying speech synthesis.
All audio elements in EventIDE can be used in parallel, including multiple instances of the same type.